Customer Stealing: Use Location Based Marketing To Your Advantage

If you are a business owner with a brick-and-mortar location, location-based marketing is a quick and easy way to pick up customers.

From your competition.

Call it customer stealing, if you will.

And it isn't difficult to pull off.

Let's pretend for a moment that I worked for a local car dealer and I was in charge of getting more customers in the door. Still pretending, let's say that I have 10 stores all across Utah and each store is in a different location with different businesses around it.

At least a few of my stores are located in "auto malls" where many of my competitors have stores in the immediate vicinity. Because of the cluster of auto dealers, the area is full of consumers who are looking to buy a car -- right now. It's easy to see that this is a target-rich-environment for marketers.

And with location-based marketing, you can now offer those customers in the area a compelling reason to come to your store -- right now.

When a consumer who is in the area "checks in" on Foursquare at one of your competitors stores, you simply offer them $2,500 in cash (or whatever you want your offer to be) to be used toward the purchase of a new or used vehicle if they come and check in at your store -- within the next 10 minutes.

And then you watch people walk into your competition, check-in and immediately leave and come to your store. It really isn't all that hard to tell what will happen over time, assuming that the offer is compelling enough to attract interest: The store that offers the best specials to buyers in the immediate area will be the busiest.

So if you happen to be an auto dealer in Utah and you notice that customers are walking out of your store and into the one across the street ...

Justin McHood has been known to smile a lot when hearing someone else talk about SEO. On occasion, you may even catch him nodding his head when someone brings up the subject of building backlinks - it happens to be a hobby of his.